Comic book legend Stan Lee has gone on Twitter to issue a joking response to the events of Avengers: Infinity War. Warning: spoilers to that, and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2, follow!
The 95-year-old veteran of Marvel Comics is famous for being the co-creator of characters such as Spider-Man, Iron Man, Ant-Man, Thor, the Hulk, Black Panther… basically, if they were in a Marvel Cinematic Universe film, he helped create them. (Also, the Fanastic Four and the X-Men.) These days he is also famous for having a cameo in just about any movie based on one of these properties.
However, he did not come up with the Mad Titan Thanos, played by Josh Brolin in the MCU. And according to ScreenRant, he is a bit testy about the nigh-unstoppable alien killing off so many of his creations.
“I go out of town for a few days, and when I get back I find out that Thanos has has destroyed everything! All my characters!” he said in a video, adding that this will mean “a lot of new work” for him to fix.
“Don’t worry; before you know it, I’ll have our friends up and at ’em, and if I were Thanos, I’d start getting out of town. Excelsior!” he said, using a catch phrase that was once common in his comics.
Lee is wrong about Thanos killing “all” his characters; in fact, Thanos killed half―literally half of all life in the universe, snuffed out with a single snap of his Infinity Gauntlet-clad fingers. Fortunately, that leaves half of the Avengers (including Iron Man, Thor, Black Widown, and non-Lee creation Captain America) still around, to somehow undo his attack in the next movie.
Of course, Lee will probably not be working on this himself; aside from his cameos, he does not seem to have much involvement in the making of the movies. He has apparently filmed his cameo for next year’s fourth Avengers, however, so he will be around when it happens.
Then again… Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 establishes that all of Stan Lee’s cameos are actually the same character, who is a member of/works for the Watchers. Maybe he will work to undo this cosmic crisis? It would certainly be a clever twist, though he will more likely sit back and let the main characters do the work.
